Freedom! I cry out for you!

Or: I have quit my day-job to pursue my own personal carrier. Both as an artist as a freelance developer for artists, theater as a teacher. So now I am officially unemployed and seeking for assignments.

But to kill the time I have decided to fix up the explanation of the printing from Max/MSP on Mac OSX and try to make a general patch how to do it. I recently have had a lot of people asking me how to do it, but the instructions I posterd earlier, don't seem to cut it. So time for an update. That post will follow soon.

Furthermore I have finally found the time to start digging into OpenFrameworks, and I must say the results look promising. A bit more memory and pointer management, but all is well that ends well.

But now: finishing my last days at IJsfontein.

We believe in CCTV as an almost absolute truth, an above-human system literally watching over us. It defines a new urban reality. How do we fit in this panopticonal reality and how do we know if we even exist in it? Does the system register our reality or its own? If we are aware of being watched, are we then still a suspect? Are we then still being watched?

I am always here is a video installation by Sylvain Vriens that deals with CCTV and the way it influences our reality. It features a CCTV-system that monitors the room in which it is present. It does this in real-time, showing the events in the room instantaneous. It seems to show an exact copy of our reality. The monitor and camera hang just above door-height and look down on those visiting the room.

I am always here is a seemingly normal CCTV-system. It hangs fairly unnoticed on the wall of the room and most people will walk past without noticing. But once it is noticed and a visitor looks up trying to see himself, he will only see the surrounding room and just a glimpse of his own image quickly fading out. It is as if he views the room as it would look without him being present.

The CCTV-system creates its own reality by filtering out those things that it finds 'uninteresting'. In the case of I am always here it filters out the people who are aware of its existence. CCTV’s preventive powers are claimed to be based upon awareness. A person looking straight into the camera is fully aware of being surveilled and won’t be seen as a possible suspect and is uninteresting from a surveillers point of view.

View on Vimeo.

Yesterday Saskia and me went to Roterdam to attach the i am always here installation to the wall in the hallway of the former Fotomuseum in Rotterdam. After some initial problems we were able to leave without worrying about it falling down halfway the night.

Today I finished testing it on location and calibrating both the camera and software. As far as I can see it works like a charm. The first reactions were very positive.

as some of you might know i am currently working hard on my graduation.

The date is set, a lot still has to be done, but i am confident that it will all work out in the coming week.

My graduation presentation is set on saturday july 12th in the former Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam (see details below). My presentation will be around 14:45 (see program below) and currently is announced as

surveillance: the new urban religion / defining reality

My (and the other presentations) are a part of the Media Technology MSc exhibition that takes place at the same location from the 10th-13th and 17th-20th. At this exhbition the project related to my graduation is also exhibited:

i am always here

A small video installation about camera surveillance and the reality that is created by it.

The week is packed with events and all of these are public and you are invited to come and visit (and participate). See below for more details.

I hope to see you all in Rotterdam. I won't be there every day, so if you want to meet in person please contact me.

Many Greetings

Sylvain Vriens

V2_Institute for the Unstable Media presents

Media Technology MSc exhibition

Six years of creative research

July 10th – 13th
July 17th – 20th
12:00 – 18:00

former Nederlands Fotomuseum
Witte de Withstraat 63, Rotterdam

http://www.v2.nl/
http://mediatechnology.leiden.edu/

Six years of creative research

The Media Technology MSc programme is a place where students are encouraged to formulate their own scientific questions, and to translate personal inspirations and curiosities into their own research projects. To answer these questions, students are stimulated to create actual installations and products because we are convinced that by doing and creating, new scientific insights into the underlying question are encountered.

The exhibition is divided in three parts:
- Selected installations realised in the last six years. This is a mixture of graduation works and other works that have been realised during the study.
- Results from the current second semester project. Small groups of students have been exploring different topics. This has lead to statements that have been translated into exhibitable work.
- Hands-on laboratory. In the laboratory students will be working on their own research that is already presentable to an audience.

The Media Technology programme is a joint initiative of Leiden University's computer science institute (LIACS) and the Faculty of Creative and Performing Arts.

July 10th – Opening day

15:00
Lecture by Koert van Mensvoort
Koert van Mensvoort is both a scientist and an artist. He will use his own work and fascinations as starting point to reflect on Media Technology. Koert is intrigued by 'Next Nature'. Next Nature is culturally emerged nature.

17:00
Opening of the exhibition by Alex Adriaansens (director of V2_)

July 12th – Graduation presentations

Four graduation projects will be presented:
14:00-14:45 Alex Reuneker: the influence of interactivity on immersion in literature
14:45-15:30 Sylvain Vriens: surveillance: the new urban religion / defining reality
15:30-16:15 Erik Hekman / Michiel Stade: continuous physical prototyping in generative design: a LEGO-based architecture approach
16:15-17:00 Elena Gavrielidou: spatial navigation and women
The presentations are public and open for anyone that is interested to attend.

July 17th – TOKO Workshop

14:00-20:00
TOKO workshops are about technical topics in the field of art, design and technology. Get inspiration or technical help from all the participants for your own creative projects. Each workshop speakers are being invited to share their knowledge and experiences. This 5th TOKO will be about RFID, radio-frequency identification. Confirmed speakers for this session are: Iris Douma and Leo van der Veen (http://nr37.nl). More will be announced at http://dewar.nl/toko. The workshop is open for everyone. Please send an email to toko@dewar.nl to register for free and get more information.

July 19th – Masterclass Creative Research

14:00-17:00
There must be more room for creativity and unconventional ideas in scientific research. Only through dealing creatively with research itself can we achieve results that could otherwise not be envisioned, and can science remain groundbreaking. Just as in the Dutch concept of autonomous artists, there should be free-thinking and creative scientists – autonomous scientists.
This idea is central in the Media Technology MSc programme of Leiden University. In the masterclass this creative research concept is presented – with many examples – and is much room for discussion. Some examples and results of unconventional scientific research are presented as installations in the exposition.
The masterclass is taught by Maarten Lamers and Bas Haring (Leiden University, Media Technology MSc programme) and is part of the six years creative research exposition presented by the V2_Institute for the Unstable Media.
The masterclass is free and open for anyone that is interested to attend. It's advised to register at http://mediatechnology.leiden.edu/masterclass/

The exhibition features the following projects

Team Untangle
Matthew Jarvis
Casper Schipper
Lieven van Velthoven

How do people solve problems together, which strategy proves best? Or might we even be better off alone? By providing a deceptively simple game in a large interactive playfield, Team Untangle tries to explore and measure our problem solving behaviour.

Infinite Nothingness
Aggelos Bousmpouras
Clintonne Kip
Mario Ruiz

Starting from a point (zero dimensional object), fractal worlds are unveiled. Hidden behind a seeming nothingness, each one with its own soundscape, unfolding to new worlds and new sounds… ad infinitum. The goal of this project is to allow the user to create and manipulate these sounds my means of fractals.

Seismic Body Signals
Anja Hofele
Thomas Kusch
Myriam Traub
Katja Wahl

Fogpatch has reconstructed a traumatic body experience of the German cybernetician Max Bense, which he described in the text "Existenzmitteilung aus San Franzisko" written in 1970. Seismic signals and recordings from the Golden Gate Bridge represent the thoughts of the Cartesian philosopher, who worked in depth on the topic of where art and technology intersect.

Love Will Tear Us Apart
Stelios Gianoullis
Bastiaan Terhorst

Relationships need distance, but also closeness. Awareness for the necessity of this constant change is created by using it as a seed for the environment. Compelled to move within the space, participants try to find the ideal distance and claim their love balance.

Tick-Tech
Sanne Fennema
Dünya Kırkalı
Wilco Tomassen

Is the use of technology for the better, simpler and more practical or not? Experience the development of technologies through time and its impact on our daily human life.

The Immortaliser
Lisa Dalhuijsen
Richard Hardstone
Antal Ruhl

Your actions have an infinite effect on the world, although it's not always clear how. The Immortaliser captures you as a visitor of the exhibition, and turns your actions into a statue. You will be remembered forever.

Harmonoise
Christian Detweiler
Hanco Hogenbirk
Danica Mast

Disruption of personal or collective harmony in music. You influence the world around you and the world influences you… Collective harmony can only exist, if you are willing to give up certain personal desires.

I Am Always Here
Sylvain Vriens

We believe in CCTV as an almost absolute truth, an above-human system literally watching over us. It defines a new urban reality. How do we fit in this panopticonal reality and how do we know if we even exist in it? Does the system register our reality or its own?

ShameStation
Ralph Kok
Nicolette Lelieveld
Jeroen Oliemans

Suppose you could control another person to the extent of making this person hurt other people, would you still be able to feel emotions such as shame and guilt? Who should feel guilty or ashamed; the one who actually hurts someone or the one who controls this person?

Globe4D
Rick Companje
Nico van Dijk
Hanco Hogenbirk
Danica Mast

This hands-on, interactive, four-dimensional globe shows on a physical sphere how our planet changes over time. Animations about the Earth's history and future, changing seasons, real-time earthquakes, daylight changes, human migration and other planets are just a few examples of the unlimited possibilities created by this new way of globe viewing.

MusicalNodes
Lisa Dalhuijsen
Lieven van Velthoven

A music library that combines physics-based visualisation with direct manipulation of the music.

Sound Illusion Cube
Thijs Eerens

SIC is an installation build to research if people get spatial disorientated by only sound and movement. It's based on the madhouse principle in fun parks but instead of people seeing a rotating room, they now only hear rotating sound while they are blinded sitting in a moving chair. According to the test results, SIC is working and so people can get spatial disoriented by sound and movement.

Cyclotactor
Staas de Jong

This lab session will provide a look over the shoulder at ongoing
research at LIACS into tactile interaction for new musical interfaces.

Life24
Joey van Dijk
Maurice Kraanen
Chris Pieplenbosch

Virtual globalizing the world, by individual understanding, formed in 1 space, using the current forms of digital media in the here and now.

Twilight Films presents: The man with the stick
Stijn Belle
Antonis Lyras

Are our mental images a copy of reality? Or is reality a copy of our mental images? You could all be part of some reality without even knowing about it. You could all become part of my reality without even wanting it. And you will… Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

OutRandom
Tiago Borges Coelho
Christina Papakonstantinou
Maarten Wesselius

OutRandom is a game in which the only task for players is to push the buttons in an order which is as unpredictable as possible. Who is most random, wins. OutRandom shows that acting randomly can be a gaming skill that you can train. It challenges you to think of strategies for being random.

Reaction Machine
Jonas Hielscher
Klaas Jan Mollema

The interactive installation Reaction Machine plays with the intimate field of tension between the people. Balance of power, personal input and connecting old and new technology are all part of this experience. Reaction Machine is an open system, in which the visitor's reaction determines the art work.

BugMan
Wim van Eck

Is it possible to merge the unpredictable behaviour of an animal with a computer game by replacing parts of the computer code with animal behaviour? How will this affect the game? To study these questions, a variant of Pac-Man was created in which the virtual ghosts are controlled by real crickets.

Basil do Brazil
Dünya Kırkalı
Antal Ruhl

Neural networks combined with evolutionary algorithms, visualised as bacteria who can move, eat, grow, learn and multiply.

Other featured projects:
Diceman
Camera Motion Sensor
Multi-Touch, an intuitive interface
Greedy Robot

move away, leave me alone, step back

ev_lines is a generative interactive video-installation which reacts to a spectator in a stressful way. In 'rest' the screen is black with one line slowly moving across the screen.

As soon as a spectator moves closer the algorithm speeds up, generating more and more lines with increasing speed until the screen is almost fully covered with white lines. As soon as the spectator moves back the system falls back to it’s state of rest with again one line slowly moving across the screen.

The television constantly hums softly and the more stressed the system gets, the louder it hums, up to a loud buzz.

Television, does it influence us or do we influence it?

The In-Sucking Power of the General Excuse is an installation / performance which takes in and processes a live television-signal and outputs new images and sounds. It plays with the narrative and shows the level of abstraction and randomness we have gotten used to.

The performer or user uses a normal remote control to switch channels to generate new images and sounds. Each time the channel changes a new algorithm is triggered. At first the channel will show normally and then gradually the algorithm changes the image and the sound. In some cases this is hardly noticeable, sometimes it is more direct, all depending on the expectations one has of the channel being watched.

Like with regular television, you have no real control on the output. If you don't like what you see and hear you can only change the channel.

Do you find it to dark? You will pump!

An exertion interface which the visitors have to use to keep the lights on.

Visitors use a bicycle pump to 'pump' light into the lamps around the room which will start leaking very slowly, lowering their brightness over time. Every once in a while a visitor has to pump again to keep the lights on the desired brightness.

Four times the same faces staring at you, constantly brushing his teeth. Creepy.

A DVD-loop showing me doing one of the things I could do all day: brushing my teeth.

Always too late. Always too late.

An interactive video installation addressing the issue of always having to be reachable by phone. In an age where everybody has a cell phone, how frustrating do we find it when we can't reach somebody?

The installation consists of an old telephone and an old television. The television displays security-footage of an empty (office) space, switching between viewpoints every couple of seconds.

Two scenarios:

1. The surveillance shows a person entering the room. He sits down and dials a number. He waits. The old telephone starts ringing. It keeps ringing. "Ring" "Ring" "Ring" The man waits. At the moment a visitor answers the phone the man is tired of waiting so long and hangs up frustrated and leaves the room. The visitor is left with an empty room and a busy-tone.

2. A visitor picks up the phone and dials a random number. Subtitles claim the on-screen telephone is ringing. The visitor waits. Waits. Waits. Gives up. Hangs up. And then a man comes running into the room and picks up the phone. "Hello?" "Hello?" He hangs up and leaves the room again.

Even in the most public spaces people have the need for private space. Unaware they create a distance between themselves and others. Have-A-Seat enlarges this behavioral pattern between strangers.

Have-A-Seat is an interactive art installation addressing the issue of the need for personal space and public territory in public space.

Have-A-Seat is a seemingly normal sofa that deals with the behavioral patterns that arise when people in a public space try to create some personal space around them. Have-A-Seat emphasizes these behaviors by enlarging the natural reaction of persons when two strangers sit down next to each other. At the same time the installation gives the users their desired personal space and so raising awareness of this unconscious desire of the users.

Have-A-Seat makes the participant and the viewer aware of the fact that two strangers are almost always looking for a distance between them. The sofa confronts the persons with their unconscious need and fulfills it at the same time. As soon as there are two persons sitting on the sofa the sofa 'breaks' apart and the two seats ride away from each other. As soon as one person leaves the sofa the two seats will come together and again form a seemingly normal sofa.

Have-A-Seat deals with the interactions between strangers in public space for a purpose of having a rest on a seat for a limited amount of time. This falls into the personal spacing between strangers in a non-conversational situation, typically requiring 50 centimeters of personal space in between individuals. The cultural norms employed in the installation are those of North-western Europe. The applicable concepts of proximity for this project are personal distance between strangers (personal space) and public territory (territory behavior).

More information is available in our paper, which is available on request.

Have-A-Seat is created by Michiel Stade, Sylvain Vriens and Mika Igarashi within the context of the 2nd semester project assignment of the masters programme Mediatechnology (Leiden University, The Netherlands).